


Scoundrel Days

by lonelywalker



Category: Iron Man (Movies), X-Men (Movies)
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-04-18
Updated: 2011-04-18
Packaged: 2017-10-18 08:08:43
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,370
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/186769
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lonelywalker/pseuds/lonelywalker
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Tony Stark knows how to play the game. If only he knew how to win.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Scoundrel Days

Every Monday evening, as the day fades into night behind New York skyscrapers, Tony Stark plays chess in Central Park with an old man who could well be his grandfather, who could well be anyone's grandfather. They've been doing this for months, ever since July, when Tony had blazed into the city with summertime glee and the sort of optimism only a truly rich man can afford. And now, as the dark comes upon them faster, as there's a shiver in the air, they are still gazing at wooden pieces, black and white, and hitting the timers with just the same attitude: Tony's precise carelessness, the old man's quiet confidence.

Tony has yet to win a game, but he's hoping.

"I have a good feeling about tonight," he says, leaning back in his chair so that the front two legs lift inches from the ground and the back pair dig more firmly into dirt and autumn leaves. "Yeah... a great feeling."

The old man doesn't spare him a glance, studying the board, moving the required piece, tapping the timer with just the right amount of force. He'll only talk during Tony's turns. And that's just fine. Tony's turns are generally so long that, without a bit of conversation, either one of them might easily fall asleep otherwise.

Tony tips his chair back forward, takes his lukewarm coffee cup in both hands, and peers at the board as if he's never seen such a thing before.

The old man sighs, and Tony grins.

"I could rip your heart right out of your chest," the old man had said to him, the very first time, when Tony had crept in among throngs of players wearing his very best designer disguise, topped off with a Nicks cap pulled low. By that point, of course, Iron Man had been so thoroughly showcased, analyzed, praised, and derided by the world media that even if someone had recognized him, he would probably have been regarded with just as much interest as Nick Lachey. ( _Who's Nick Lachey?_ JARVIS had asked him, no doubt just so Tony could smirk and nod and say, _Exactly_.)

Over the few months before, ever since the beginning of his association with Nick Fury and the Avengers Initiative (he is still without a decent answer regarding what, exactly, they might be avenging), Tony had been pleasantly surprised by how little conversation seemed to come directly from 1950s comic books. Even the few super-powered enemies he's confronted had seemed happy to just try to kill him rather than indulging in ridiculously overblown threats.

But this guy... Perhaps it was his tone. Perhaps the tattoo on the inside of his forearm that _surely_ should have faded after sixty years. But Tony's chest had spontaneously started to itch.

"Mm," he'd said after just a fraction of a hesitation. "Well I think you'll find I can run on a car battery pretty well, too. It wouldn't be as dramatic as you'd hope."

Warren Worthington III and Hank McCoy have ascertained through several studies of the late Dr. Rao's work that the mutant "cure" is, indeed, effective. But there have been rumors... anecdotes drifting on the breeze about happily depowered mutants suddenly setting rooms ablaze, falling through floors, speaking in tongues... And this old man, worn and wrinkled and weary, was one of the most powerful, sheer energy bubbling below the surface, able to detonate nuclear weapons from halfway around the planet if he put his mind to it. Could a hypodermic needle ever take that away?

Tony's not-altogether-pleasant experiences with hypodermics in the past can only tell him that he has no idea what to expect.

"I was in Westchester at the weekend," he says, realizing that the cold air has sucked most of the warmth out of his coffee already. "I saw that plane they say you built. Pretty impressive tech. For the time, that is. It's a little out of date now."

The old man smiles. "Only a few years behind the most advanced of your technology, Mr. Stark. And I built it more than a decade ago."

He has that same precision in his speech, every syllable weighed and measured, the rote of a boy learning a foreign tongue, determined that no one should ever laugh at his inadvertent mistakes. Tony had tried Spanish at prep school. Had been laughed at anyway. Had decided that he'd encourage everyone else to speak English instead, and pretend the insults were compliments.

"Not all of us have..." Tony waves his hands around in the international symbol for: "Magic powers." Hanging around the Xavier Academy had tried even his usual lack of patience with kids. Kids who could fly, teleport, run faster than a speeding bullet, and lift hundred-pound barbells with one finger _all without the help of a robotic suit_ were just out to make him feel bad.

"Magic powers?" The old man seems to be turning the concept over in his mouth and mind. "Tell me, Stark, have you ever been tested for the mutant gene? I've heard you were quite the teenage prodigy, beyond anything most humans could ever achieve."

Tony remembers that he should at least try to move a piece and advance the game. "So I'm smart. Maybe you should test to see if I'm Jewish instead. All those Nobel prizewinners? It would make so much more sense if they were secretly mutants. I've heard they're thinking of testing Usain Bolt and Michael Phelps too. You can't just be fast anymore. You have to be superhuman."

The old man watches him, amused, and takes less than a minute to move his own piece, capturing yet another of Tony's ill-used pawns. "Humanity is inexorably evolving into _us_. Today a man who can run one hundred meters in less than ten seconds. Tomorrow a man who can circumnavigate the globe in that time."

"Oh, we have one of those," Tony says. "In Canada. He keeps swearing and hanging up on me."

"I might do the same. If only I had a telephone."

"If only." Tony glances at the timer, at the board, at the timer again. It's only his purpose in being here that keeps him from deliberately throwing the game, giving up in a childish fit of boredom. Unfortunately, not even drawing out each move will keep the game, or the conversation, going on forever. "Maybe I could help you out with that. I know how tough it can be to get anyone from AT&T to answer the damn phone. Ironic, huh?"

Those clear blue eyes are still watching him, their expression one Tony had read as amusement, but what he's gradually coming to interpret as that of a predator pondering the most entertaining way to toy with its prey. Sometimes he wishes that megalomaniacal serial killers weren't always so damn _charming_.

There's not a word spoken for three moves - swift in their execution, until Tony's king thuds onto the board in defeat.

Erik Lehnsherr smiles, and leans back in his chair, stretching in the spring breeze. "Tell me, Mr. Stark, do you drink tea?"

Tony nods yes, as something in his chest begins to wind itself tighter still.

***

The Master of Magnetism, formerly one of the most dangerous men on the planet and an enduring fan of alliteration, lives in the third apartment from the stairwell on the fourth floor of an apartment building that real estate agents might describe as "charming". There is an elevator, a broken elevator that Tony frowns at, mystified, before realizing that Lehnsherr is regarding him with that same amused smile once more.

 _There it is_ , Tony thinks, jogging up the stairs in an attempt to match Lehnsherr's enviable pace. Proof that he can't have his powers. No one who can tear the Golden Gate Bridge apart with a thought could let a mere elevator go unrepaired. Even Tony wants to call the local Stark Industries office and have a repairman down here within the hour. It's just unthinkable. Except that, if he _did_ have his powers, Lehnsherr could have easily broken the elevator seconds before Tony tried the call button. Or perhaps values having an apartment only reachable by those willing to scale several flights.

Goddamn it. Fury had said that Lehnsherr had once lived with a telepath, and it shows. Tony's brain is beginning to ache. If only Lehnsherr would drop the act and just throw a car at him.

"I never cease to be amazed," Lehnsherr is saying, unlocking the door, "by how few Americans own a working kettle. How do you survive? One would think that coffee has only ever been procured from a Starbucks. And tea? _Well._ The monstrosities you call tea. It really should be a crime."

"Uh huh..." Tony is glancing around the shabby apartment, looking for photographs. He half-expects to find nothing, but there are a few on the mantel above an electric fireplace - a teenage boy with red sunglasses astride a motorcycle, an older girl in a lab coat. Tony would dismiss them as photographs of grandchildren were they not so instantly familiar. Scott Summers. Jean Grey. Tony's visited their graves as he has Harry Osborn's - some days there seem to be more dead heroes than live ones.

Lehnsherr is in the kitchen. "Milk? Sugar? Lemon?"

Tony has a feeling he's seen this in a movie, and that there's a correct answer that will instantly endear him to any good tea-drinker. He really needs to install a chip in his head so that JARVIS can tell him these things. "Uh. Lemon?" That seems sophisticated enough.

There's no reply. For all he knows, Lehnsherr might be arming himself with every knife in the place. Forks, too. And there's no telling what damage even a high-velocity spoon might do.

Tony sits down on the well-worn couch. He has no real memory of his grandparents, but he supposes they might have inhabited a place like this - clock ticking away, a musty smell permanently in the air. It should be reassuring. Lehnsherr is an old, old man, and this is the apartment of someone waiting out his remaining years. It's certainly not an underground lair. Tony might be happier if it were.

"Here we are..." And suddenly he has a china teacup and saucer in his hand, complete with a cookie for dunking. He has to hope that Lehnsherr has too much respect for the tea to taint it with any sort of poison. Even so, he almost chokes on his first sip.

"So tell me. How are our young friends in Westchester?" Lehnsherr is settled into an armchair, his legs crossed, the picture of easy rest.

Tony gingerly dips his cookie. "You should go and see them yourself. I'm sure they'd love to have you."

Lehnsherr waves a hand, dismissing the idea. "Too many bad memories. I hardly know the children now. And I can see Henry and Ororo on CNN. Our good Ambassador, and our brave spokesperson for mutant rights. Charles would have been so impressed. Did you know we have ribbons, now? And bracelets? And flags? Obviously my fault was in taking the matter of potential genocide too seriously. I should have been _far_ more frivolous."

"You did wear a cape. And a helmet... Seriously, what was with the helmet?"

"I hear you have your own line of action figures."

Tony shrugs. "I know a business opportunity when I see one. We do the Fantastic Four as well. And we would do Spider-Man if the guy ever showed up to meetings. Tell you a secret - I'm betting he and Daredevil are the same guy. Spandex. Leather. There's some kind of weird fetish going on there."

Lehnsherr, justifiably, is staring at him. "They tell me you're brilliant, Stark, and I've known brilliance. Sadly, I see very little evidence of it in you other than that famous chestpiece of yours."

"It's pretty cool, huh?" Tony taps it. He could provoke the guy the same way Lehnsherr seems to want to provoke him, but having the arc reactor torn from his chest had been absolutely no fun the first time around, and he really doesn't want Fury to have to scrape him off the sidewalk. Not again.

He leans forward, elbows on knees, putting down the tea. "I know how much you must miss it. You could build spy planes out of scrap metal. And now you're living here? Playing chess? Where's the competition? Where's the challenge? Seriously, if I'm the best player you can spend your time with, we both know your brain must be rotting from lack of use."

Tony grins. "You ever met Reed Richards? Absolutely no social skills, but that guy was building spaceships in his backyard when he was twelve. Bruce Banner? Pioneered some of the most dazzling work in sub-atomic particles since the Manhattan Project. You might not like me, but I know you'd like my club."

"Your... _club_." Lehnsherr sips his tea, looking at Tony as if he's humoring a five year old. "I've been through this before. Dressing up and saving the world? The world doesn't deserve to be saved. Those who are different have _always_ been hated. Today you're heroes, Stark. Tomorrow Richards is in a traveling circus and you're an enemy of the state."

"Did you notice that you're neither?" Tony gets to his feet, nudging himself out of the comfortable complacency it would be so, so easy to settle into. Fury keeps telling him that he needs to start thinking like a soldier, but _not_ thinking like an average forty-something billionaire playboy is about Tony's limit. And that's a stretch. "How many people have you killed? You could have wiped out every world leader, more or less. And you've put thousands in danger."

He can sense Lehnsherr's eyes on him as he strolls to the window, parts the blinds with a finger. "Yes? But they know they can't contain me. The last time they tried... Well, you've seen the security footage, I imagine."

"They can't contain Magneto," Tony points out calmly. "Erik Lehnsherr? They don't _need_ to contain him. He's just a weak old man."

He has to wonder if he'll hear the glass shatter before or after he realizes that he's been flung off his feet. At the school in Westchester he'd spoken to "Mr. Logan", who had said little while Ororo Munroe had given him the grand tour, but had quietly suggested that he send someone else to talk to Magneto. Someone with a heart made out of something far less interesting than steel. And that was only if they absolutely had to talk. Tony could guess from the way Fury talked about Wolverine that talking wasn't even on his top fifty list of things to do to Magneto.

"Weak old men can do more than you think."

And is that the elevator crippled, the doors locked, the windows bolted down, an invisible fist tightening around the arc reactor?

Lehnsherr sips his tea. Makes an appreciative noise. "Every genocide in history has been perpetrated by men and women without a shred of mutant or superhuman abilities. Without robotic suits. Without even guns, in some cases. If humans can find a reason to kill each other - and they always do - they will also find a way."

Tony turns around, leaning back against the windowsill. "And you'd prefer to kill than to protect?"

"Isn't it the same thing? I kill your people to protect mine?"

"Why does it have to me my people versus yours?" Tony asks, his fingers gripping the edge of the sill just a little too tightly. "We're all the same."

Lehnsherr chuckles into his tea. "How very American of you, Stark. It is _always_ my people versus yours."

***

Tony is beginning to distinguish between eight very distinct kinds of bruises by the time he sees the old man again. Fury has hired the best of the best to teach him, to spar with him when he has the suit on, and especially when it's off. Sometimes it barely seems to matter - he always ends up taping up bruised fingers and wondering what to do about ripped-up fingernails while trying to walk in a straight line without tipping over.

Pepper thinks it's hilarious.

She's laughing in the little booth that looks out onto the gym as Tony whacks open the door with his shoulder and makes some pointed remark about raises and the probability of her seeing one in hell.

Magneto is with her. There's no cape, no helmet, but the grandfatherly ensemble has been replaced with clothes that might have come cheap from a military surplus store. The stubble is gone, the shaggy hair cropped into a neater cut. There is tension in his body, a spring tightly coiled.

Tony raises a hand. "Hi," he says. And Magneto hurls him backwards through the window, his mind registering the prick of glass in his back before the noise, but neither before he's slammed into the back wall of the gym, coughing up what might be blood.

It's not blood, as it turns out, and Magneto watches him pick himself up off the ground rather shakily, convinced that some vital bone somewhere must be shattered into dust. His head hurts, and there's glass littering the floor, and a good massage wouldn't be out of the question. He blinks, and runs his tongue over his teeth. "That the best you can do?"

Magneto smiles. "Dear boy," he says, and it's a statement rather than a precursor. He turns and seeks out Pepper. "Does your lovely assistant make a good English cup of tea?"

Over the following weeks, Tony learns more about both power and pain than he had ever imagined he could subject himself to. Magneto deals out punishment with a flick of the wrist, can lift him effortlessly, as well as almost every object in any room in which they happen to be. And in the suit it's worse. For him there's complete paralysis, and a sense of claustrophobia that gives rise to panic, as though he's been buried alive. For Magneto, there's complete control, and Tony is beginning to realize the temptation of _that_ kind of power.

Fury watches them, takes notes, monitors Magneto's movements just as he had done in New York. But there's nothing any of them can do, seriously, to imprison him again. Tony talks to Ororo Munroe and Henry McCoy and listens to all of their warnings. But this is a choice he had made before he sat down to chess that very first time. They should know by now that he's terrible at games of strategy. He's always preferred games of chance.

"I'm surprised you haven't killed me," Tony says, taping up his fingers, poking at grazed knuckles with a little macho pride. "I'm not a mutant. I might even be a threat to mutants - to terrorists like you."

Magneto rolls his eyes _just_ a little at that word. "Do you suppose even the most violent racist kills every person of another race he sees? I walk among humans daily. Trying to eliminate them one by one would be pointless. Evolution has spoken, Stark. Humanity will die out with the Neanderthal and the dinosaur. My concern is that humanity be unable to harm _us_ , homo superior, in the meantime. You may condemn me, but humanity has always made the first move. The Mutant Registration Act, the so-called 'cure', the plot for a mutant holocaust..."

"That wasn't humanity," Tony argues. "That was one right-wing senator who wouldn't know a mutant if one slapped him in the face, a businessman with more money than sense, and a grieving father who some moron let have access to some of the most advanced technology on the planet."

"That moron, as I recall, was the President of the United States."

Tony shrugs. "Everyone makes mistakes, particularly when they're afraid. And you _make_ people afraid, Erik. If our first mutant had been that little Pryde girl, all apple cheeks and dimples..."

Magneto sips tea with all the grace of the English gentleman he most assuredly isn't. "I'm not looking for acceptance, Stark. Homosexuality has existed since the dawn of time. Judaism almost that long. And today gays and Jews are still lynched in the street, no matter how much _acceptance_ they have."

"Humanity sucks," Tony says. "I get that. I really do. But if you succeed, if you create your mutant utopia? You're just going to have mutants trying to kill you."

"At least it would be a glorious death," Magneto says, his eyes on Tony's, any hint of irony heavily disguised.

Tony sighs. "I'm going to make some coffee."

***

He gets tired of the beatings pretty quickly. Fury has told him that, just like a boxer, he needs to learn how to take punishment, needs to learn how to adapt to pain and exhaustion and a heavily bruised ego. Tony had thought about hiring some cute aerobics instructor to yell at him a bit and make him do push-ups. He'd even, when Fury had started in on Magneto, suggested that he could hang out with the kids at the Xavier school for a bit. Swinging from monkey bars and jogging through tires might have been fun.

He certainly wouldn't end up with recurring nightmares about being crushed.

The battle with Obadiah had left him wounded, his head spinning, but he'd got up and walked away. Horrifying as it all might have been to an outsider - Pepper has reassured him of this - it had all happened too damn quickly to be truly scared, adrenaline fueling him, and there had always been options.

There are no options with Magneto. They play out different scenarios, different uses of their abilities, and it always ends with Tony being scooped up and slammed into a wall, or the floor. Lately, Magneto has just paralyzed the suit, has squeezed it slowly as JARVIS reports devastating damage and Tony feels every crack in the darkness.

The second night he wakes up in a cold sweat, he heads down to the workshop in his boxers. Butterfingers really _does_ make an excellent double espresso at 2am.

It takes him a week of sketching, testing, re-testing, and arguments with JARVIS about just how far he can stretch the laws of physics. It's a week of more beatings, of more discussions of morality while wondering just when Magneto might choose to wrench out his eyeballs. But he's just about learning to take it. Provided, of course, that he'll finally have his opportunity to strike back.

On Sunday morning, he sneaks up on Magneto. "Morning."

Magneto, to his credit, doesn't drop his teacup (which disappoints Tony just a little), but he does _stop_ , and Tony can see his eyes reflected in the mirrored door of the cabinet in front of them both. He can see them searching.

"Plastic polymers," Tony explains, dropping into a seat by the table and unfurling his newspaper with the sort of ease that only comes about after rehearsing such a move in one's mind several hundred times. "Not much good for permanent use, but definitely a bonus when you're going up against someone who can... wait, what did you say? Rip my heart out of my chest?"

Magneto clears his throat, and the chair unceremoniously dumps Tony on the floor. "I could still do it," he says, although there's more tension behind those smooth tones than Tony's sensed in weeks. "But it wouldn't be quite as swift, or neat, or painless."

Tony clambers to his feet, massaging his tailbone, and wondering if perhaps he should have done this in a room not stacked with stainless-steel cutlery. Explaining fork wounds to Pepper might require more than his usual ingenuity.

"But you've really been a huge help, Erik. Absolutely." He picks up the chair and straightens it. "I've always said I do my best work under stress. And not necessarily even in caves. So I can work from this and adapt the technology to the entire suit... It'll be really useful when you stop being _such_ a nice guy and SHIELD figures out a way to hold you."

Magneto turns to face him, and Tony is beaming, expecting a look of defeat, of realization that he's finally been outdone, out-thought, out- _played_.

There's one step, and an outstretched hand Tony is about to shake - the gracious victor - when he's thrown off-balance by the chair smashing into his shins, and hoisted several inches into the air by a hand around his throat.

Tony coughs, his fingers trying to pry Magneto's loose. "Yeah, all right. Let me..."

Tony's been kissed by men before. Usually drunk men. Usually when he was very drunk himself. He's certainly never been kissed by a supervillain in his kitchen. It's the sort of thing that might even take Fury aback a little. (But just a little.)

Magneto can't possibly be this strong. He's a seventy... wait, eighty? Doing mental arithmetic while the room swims before his eyes is hardly Tony's strong point, and most of his concentration is on the stubble grazing his lips and the tongue that really shouldn't be in his mouth.

Tony chokes, and drops, and gasps as the room whites out around him, the tiled floor grinding into his knees.

When he comes to, when his eyes focus and his brain has just about finished berating him for not giving it enough oxygen, Magneto is sitting at the table, newspaper spread out before him, thoughtfully doing the daily crossword.

***

As it happens, there's little time for more training, and their last skirmish in the SHIELD training room is less violent than any of their sessions have been before. Tony, locked in his still-metal suit, can't tell whether Magneto is being wary, or simply a lion toying with a mouse. He doesn't get the chance to find out.

Fury is never exactly flustered, but his coat does blow slightly in the breeze as he charges into the room, slapping Pepper in the chest with a sheaf of papers, and yelling something about a superhuman attack on San Francisco.

San Francisco. Of course. With the X-Men and Spider-Man and Daredevil and probably a dozen other circus rejects manning New York, he's left to clean up the West Coast. And the Fantastic Four? Probably off doing magazine shoots and attending premieres. He's in the process of telling Fury at least some of this before Fury unleashes a torrent of cursewords, informs him that JARVIS already has all the details, and to get in the damn air.

Tony _knew_ there was a reason he liked being CEO.

He's engaged in horizontal flight, going five hundred miles an hour over the Californian landscape, when he remembers about Magneto. He's about to ask JARVIS to detect whether Magneto is still in the building, but that question would assume he had things like responsibility. If Fury had been so keen to bring Magneto on board, he can deal with the Master of Magnetism's extracurricular activities. Maybe he could get the Jolly Green Giant to take him on.

Tony's mouth still tastes of blood and tea leaves.

"What's this guy's deal?" he asks JARVIS, as long-range sensors start to give him an idea of the action on the ground - one superhuman wreaking havoc, apparently for the sake of wreaking havoc, with an over-taxed police force attempting to evacuate civilians from the area.

"He calls himself 'The Living Laser'," JARVIS reports.

Sometimes, Tony could _swear_ that JARVIS smirks. "Did he come through a time portal from the 60s? And is that _spandex_ he's wearing?"

A flying police car, propelled by a laser blast, narrowly misses his head.

Perhaps the next stage of the suit development should be to give him an easy way of catching all the gigantic things people keep throwing in his direction. If Spidey ever came to meetings, Tony would have to get hold of some of that webbing.

He catches the car, muscles straining, and knocks it onto the roof of a building rather than down onto the fleeing crowds. But of course that just attracts Laser Boy's attention. Taking down Daredevil? Probably not that big a deal. Taking down Tony Stark? Yeah, that's worldwide press.

Just getting in close enough to the 'Living Laser' is a problem. Fury has informed him that, apparently, just blowing someone's head off is less acceptable in the USA than it is in Afghanistan. Tony can only try to stun the guy, or physically grab him, but aiming is a wee tiny bit of a problem when he's having cars and hydrants and holy crap _laser beams_ flung in his general direction.

"I need a sidekick," he informs JARVIS, blatantly ignoring all the damage reports. "You know. Iron Kid. Titanium Boy. Lithium Lad. The bad guys always go after the cute ones. Just ask Pepper."

And, with that, the barrage just... stops.

Tony almost falls out of the air in surprise, and the Living Laser doesn't look as if he has a much better grasp on the situation. It's only when the laser bolts are suddenly redirected from Tony's position that he starts paying attention to JARVIS' readouts. There's another Iron Man suit in the sky. One that had been hanging in the workshop - just a collection of prototypes, really, unpainted and unwired and... Well, Tony had _thought_ they were inoperable.

"Tell me that isn't Rhodey," he says to JARVIS. "Or, you know, Pepper."

He does seem to surround himself with people hellbent on doing really, really foolish things in the name of saving his butt.

Tony's already set on a course to intercept the momentarily-distracted Living Laser while JARVIS explains to him that there's absolutely no electrical activity in the suit. It's just some metal welded together around a human form.

"Great," Tony manages to say, avoiding a laser blast and grabbing the Living Laser by both arms. He doesn't have any handcuffs, but he hardly needs them. Trying to get free of his suit-empowered strength should be...

"Oof!" Tony says, vehemently.

...futile?

He's busy skidding along the road on his back, his suit raising sparks, before he realizes that, yes, the Living Laser doesn't need his hands to fire those things. He could be firing blasts from the backs of his knees for all Tony knows.

Of course, with the Living Laser's attention on him... Tony turns a somersault and takes to the air, looking for the mysterious flying suit - the mysterious flying suit that can _only_ be inhabited by Magneto. And Tony had thought he wouldn't fly anywhere without a cape.

The Living Laser is bellowing something at him, probably more Evil Guy crap, but Tony isn't listening. He's watching the metal begin to move, reshaping itself, fitting together, and then, with a rush of air, completely encapsulating the Living Laser.

As police officers tentatively venture forward to deal with the fallen villain, Tony soars to the rooftops once more, in search of Magneto.

"I'm going to have to call a press conference to explain all of this, you know."

His faceplate retracts as he finds Magneto perched on the hood of the police car he'd unceremoniously dumped on the top of an apartment building. The fragments of the other Iron Man suit are scattered, lifeless, on the ground. Magneto raises his eyebrows. "Explain it how?"

"Stark Industries' prototype that mimics your powers," Tony says, wiping sweat from his forehead. "Of course, it was entirely unsuccessful. Overheated. Fell to pieces. Unless of course you want this as a regular gig?"

Magneto laughs, and gets to his feet. "One time only, dear boy. I have my own work to do."

"I bet." Tony steps over to the edge of the building and glances down at the clean-up operation that's already underway. "You know you just helped a human take down another human who was threatening yet more humans, right?"

Magneto's gone, and Tony doesn't ask JARVIS to find him. Let that be Fury's problem for a while.

But he could kill for a cup of tea.

***

Every Monday evening, as the day fades into night behind New York skyscrapers, Tony Stark plays chess in Central Park.

These days, he takes on all comers.

(Sometimes he even wins.)


End file.
